PASSENGER TRAFFIC

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19058, 10 July 1924, Page 4

PASSENGER TRAFFIC

It is clearly desirable that overseas civic authorities should keep in touch with traffic developments elsewhere, especially in view of the apparently growing tendency of the ’bus to supplant the tram. The latest authoritative statement to hand on this subject is by Mr. Walter Rowley, M. Inst. C.E., of Leeds, who writes to the Yorkshire Post in opposition to a suburban tramway extension contemplated by the Leeds City Council. If, says Mr. Rowley, one were not so accustomed to the Leeds Council and its members promoting and entering upon schemes involving great expenditure and burden on ratepayers, with no better result, I should have thought it incredible that such a scheme as the extension of the tramways to Middleton should be proposed. In the light of the knowledge and experience which investigation has furnished of the failure of tramways in London, the authority there will not allow any extensions (or any whatever in the main streets, and then only on the side of the road), but are condemning and abandoning tramways and supplanting them by motor ’buses, which are not only more economical, but more convenient and less dangerous. The tramways monopolise the roads, for which, unlike railways, they pay nothing. If they did, the tramways could not commercially exist. But what is more serious is the occupation of the centre of the road, leaving all industrial traffic to travel in the narrow margin up against the kerbstone. Accidents and risks are involved, such as make the monopoly of the roads a cruel and unnecessary violation of the rights of the people to an open road for traffic. Time has over and over again shown the failure of the street tramway system. When tramways were first introduced some 80 years ago, after trial, they were abandoned as economically and commercially wrong, and were only revived in recent years. The lesson taught by our grandfathers having been ignored, are we again to refuse to profit by their failure? Such is the high standard of municipal morality in Leeds, indeed, as described by a well-known authority, “that wo go on sinning, instead of repenting of our errors,” to which few have the courage to call attention. Instead of extending tramways, we should consider giving them up, and replacing them with motor ’buses. The motor ’bus is an ideal system from every aspect; it may be regarded as a solution of street locomotion.